Monday, April 07, 2014

From Charters of Secular Values to Rights and Freedoms

In a couple of hours from now, Québec will have a new premier and new governing party, as Pauline Marois and her minority governing Parti Québécois will be bowled over by Philippe Couillard and the Liberals, who will in all likelihood take a majority of the seats in the Assemblée Nationale du Québec. Now, even though Péquistes will blame Marois and Pierre Karl Péladeau push for independence, separatism and political and economic sovereignty association as the key reason for the loss, this is simply not so, despite the rise in the Canadian dollar and stock in Justine Trudeau for Prime Minister which shall commence tomorrow, this confidence in Canadian federalism is just a small blip on the commentary that was the Québec Election Vote 2014 campaign. No, the larger theme, which is somewhat linked, is the defeat of the idea by Marois, Bernard Drainville, and those same Péquistes of a Charte des Valeurs Laïcité Québécoises, or Charter of Québécoises Secular Values, one that was to firmly and finally put a nail in the coffin of all other religions but the state run secular one the government religiously follows and devotedly adheres to anyway, shape, or form.

How Couillard had come to his most brilliant campaign strategy one will have to believe was upon instinct alone, but deep down inside the backroom of the Big Red Machine, they must have recognized the twinning of the separatism with secularism would not go well with the pure laine palate of the Québécois voter, no matter how much they had and still do back each on their own merit individually.

Mistakes are always made in election campaigns, but not ones this big, or when they are made, usually they are backed away from quickly, not trumpeted until it is too late to call them back, Marois, Drainville, Péladeau, and the other Péquistes bravely faced baptism by fire when they should have known they were going to get burnt. Bleu is out, rouge is in, and Trudeau is now an Ontario Tory victory, though not really needed anymore, from safely owning 24 Sussex Drive and entreating Québec via Couillard to sit down and sign the other charter, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982, to right the wrong made by Pauline's papa René Lévesque and Justin's Pierre to make it all vrai. But for the Parti Québécois, and its federal brother Bloc Québécois, the numbering of their days shocks us all, never in this lifetime would any of us Canuck politicos have ever guessed the New Democrats at the national stage and provinally yet again the Liberals would eclipse such regionally strong brands as these, in an election campaign that one charter could be replaced by another, and that sometimes the rights and freedoms produced by the state can still protect a people's religion over that of that same legislative state.